 Bowen and colleagues ask us to reimagine how to conduct research and academic practice partnerships and to develop capacity in the applied research and health workforce to do this. This commentary reinforces their messages and describes a framework of research capacity development for impact, RCD, which emphasizes active and continuous experiential learning within research partnerships. The RCD framework includes the need to focus on multiple levels in the collaboration architecture and describes principles of working that aims to increase impact on services and learning opportunities for all partners. This article was authored by Joe Cook.